Michelle Sagara – Cast In Courtlight (страница 4)

“Where’s Teela?” she asked Tain. The two were often inseparable.

Tain’s silence had a little of the Hawklord’s grimness. “Either you’re not going to answer,” she said carefully, “or you are, and I won’t like it.”

“Why would you be displeased?” he said. “You are.”

“It is a matter that concerns the Barrani.” Cold and imperious.

“This means you won’t answer.”

“No,” he said, the word measured and stretched thin, given it was only a meager syllable, and that, in Elantran. Elantran was the default language of the Hawks, because everyone spoke it. Unfortunately, the labyrinthine paper trail of the Law itself was written in Barrani. He could have spoken his mother tongue, and she’d have been able to follow it with the ease of long practice, Barrani being one of the few things she’d been able to learn while locked in a classroom and chained to a desk, metaphorically speaking.

“You’ve looked at the duty roster?” he added.

“Not recently. It’s not like it hasn’t been changed six times a day for the last week. Why?”

He gestured toward the board that had been nailed into the wall by an annoyed bureaucrat. There, also nailed into the wall, was a long piece of paper that bore several marks and a few gashes—that would be Marcus.

The only time the duty roster was this complicated was during the Festival. She approached the board and scanned it carefully.

“I’m not on it!”

“Lucky you. You want to talk to so-called merchants who can’t spell and can’t plot their way out of a wet bag?” “It’s better than the alternative.” “And that?”

“Talking to—or listening to—mages who couldn’t police their way out of a murder.” She frowned. “What’s this?” she asked him softly.

“Good girl.”

Anyone else, she would have hit. Barrani, on the other hand, required more cautious displays of annoyance.

“High Court duty?” She frowned. Looked at the names. There were Aerians among them, and Barrani; there were almost no humans.

Severn was one of them.

“What the hell is High Court duty?”

“Have you paid no attention to office gossip?”

“I’ve been busy being insulted by Imperial mages.”

“This Festival,” he said quietly, “the castelord has called his Court. It has been a number of years since he has chosen to do so. I don’t think you were even alive for the last one.”

She had never been good in the classroom. She had never been bad outside of it. “Teela’s gone to Court,” she said flatly.

“She was summoned, yes.”

“But she’s—”

“She has not been summoned as a Hawk,” he continued quietly. “She will take her place among her peers in the High Caste.”

Kaylin almost gaped at him. “Teela? In the High Caste Court?”

His expression made clear that there was nothing humorous about it, although Kaylin wasn’t laughing. He nodded. The nod was stiff for a Barrani nod; they kind of epitomized grace.

“Is she in trouble?”

“She may well be.”

“Why?”

“She failed,” he said softly, “to bring the nature of your … mark … to the castelord’s attention.”

“But he—” She stopped. “Evarrim.”

“Lord Evarrim. You attracted his interest,” he added softly. “What have we told you about attracting the interest of a high lord?”

“It’s lethal.”

“Yes. But not always for you.” The disapproval in the words was mild, for Tain. “She will be called upon to defend her oversight,” he added.

“You’re worried?”

Tain shrugged. “She owes me money.”

Kaylin laughed. It was a bitter sound. “Severn’s there.”

“I note that you haven’t tried to kill him since you returned to active duty.”

She shrugged. It was easier than words. Everything about Severn had changed. And much about Kaylin, to Kaylin’s horror, had changed, as well.

What they had—what had driven them apart—had been the foundations upon which she’d built this life; he’d kicked them out from under her feet, and she still didn’t know where to stand. Not where he was concerned.

But she’d been given the opportunity to be rid of him. And she’d rejected it, in the privacy of the Hawklord’s tower. There wasn’t likely to be a second such opportunity offered.

“Why is he on duty roster there?”

Tain didn’t answer.

“Why am I not on—oh. Never mind.” She lifted a hand and covered the mark on her cheek. To Tain, it made no difference; she could have gouged a chunk of her face off, and he’d still see it. Anyone born Barrani would.

“It will be over in one way or another.”

“Over good, or over bad?”

“It depends,” he said. His voice was the kind of guarded that implied imminent death. “On the castelord.” “But she’s a Hawk!”

“Indeed. The Hawks comprise many races, however, and the caste-law of the race has precedence in exceptional circumstances. As you would know, if you’d paid more attention in your classes.”

Exceptional circumstances: When either of two situations proved true. One: No other species was involved in the commission of the crime or its outcome. This was about as likely as the sun never rising or setting, at least in this city. Two: No member of any other species could be found who would admit that they had been damaged in some way by the commission of the crime in question. This, given the nature of the Barrani’s exceptionally long memory and their famous ability to nurse a grudge down a dozen merely mortal generations, was entirely too likely.

“He can’t make her outcaste. She’s already pledged to Imperial service.”

“The Lords of Law are pledged to the service of the Emperor. Employing an outcaste Barrani would not be in the best interests of any one of those Lords.”

“Marcus won’t let—”

“Kaylin. Let it go. As I said, it is a Barrani affair. Teela accepted the invitation. She has gone.”

“You let her go.” She didn’t even bother to try to keep the accusation out of her voice.

“And had you been summoned by your castelord, we would have done the same.”

“Humans don’t have castelords. Not like that.”

“No. Not like that. You couldn’t. The span of your years is too short. Were it not for the intolerable speed at which you breed, there would be no humans in Elantra.” He turned away, then.

And she realized, as he did, that he’d slipped into High Barrani, and she hadn’t even noticed.

Mouth set in a thin line, she worked her way over to Marcus’s desk. He was, to no one’s surprise, on lunch. On early lunch. She was certain there was some betting going on about the duration of the lunch itself.

But that wasn’t her problem.

She began to leaf through the notices and permits on his desk, moving them with care, as if they had been constructed by a finicky architect who’d been drinking too much.

After about ten minutes, she found what she was looking for—the writs or grants of rights given to foreign dignitaries.

CHAPTER 2

When Marcus came back from lunch an hour and a half later, he walked to his desk. The circuitous way. He paused in front of the schedule nailed to the wall, glared at the various marks made by the Hawks that were lucky—or unlucky—in their assigned duties, and added a few of his own. Although the schedule itself was an official document, this particular rendering of it was not; it was meant, or so office parlance said, as a courtesy. What he added was against the spirit of the thing, but he had a Leontine sense of courtesy; it wasn’t as if he’d drawn blood.